Northern Ireland food for thought
Knives, forks, spoons…baking cutters. Tuck into Northern Ireland’s fascinating food!
I’m sitting down at 8.30am in Belfast and having a ‘when in Rome, eat how the locals eat’ moment. “If there’s a breakfast of champions,” my server advises “it has to be the Ulster Fry”. That’s fried bacon, eggs, tomato, potato bread and soda farls. Soda farls? I nod and scan the lunch page. Guinness bread? Dulse? Oysters with champ? As a Dubliner, I was going to need a little local translation…
'Yellow Man' toffee stall at the Auld Lammas Fair
Champ, as my lovely head waiter explained, is a tasty blend of floury potatoes, scallions (Spring onions) and butter, and it’s usually spooned up beside a fresh dish of seafood. Dulse is a dried edible seaweed used by star chef Paul Rankin and proudly offered at the Auld Lammas Fair in Antrim where, by the way, you’ll also find the deliciously sweet chewy toffee ‘yellow man’. The 17% Black Stuff is responsible for the rich malty taste of Guinness bread and is just one of the many creations of the deep-rooted baking traditions that are thriving in Northern Ireland.
Soda Bread Farls
Back to the soda farl: the distinctive triangular scones of soda bread, perfect for soaking up gravy and runny egg yolk. The simple recipe, unchanged for hundreds of years, lists bread soda (bicarbonate of soda), buttermilk, flour and salt. They say the bread doesn’t travel well, which is quite convienent as Northern Ireland is worth the trip for the soda farls alone.
As a hungry writer from The Times discovered while chowing down in Morton’s Fish & Chip shop in County Antrim, one of the secrets of Northern Ireland’s gastronomical alchemy is the local ingredients. “The fish on ice are all fresh off last night’s boats. The lobsters are stirring lazily and even the prawns are still moving.”
A Donaghadee fisherman
Food festivals are another foodie attraction up here: the perfect blend of de rigour munching, merriness and music. One of the prettiest urban settings has to be the lush Botanic Gardens for five days of alfresco dining at Belfast’s Taste and Music Fest in August. While the renowned Hillsborough Oyster Festival shucks exactly what it says on the tin. And there’s shucking like regular folk, and ‘shucking’ Colin Shirlow from Dromore-style. This guy makes an annual appearance as the undefeated Guinness World Oyster Eating champion – he ate 233 oysters in 3 minutes! When in Rome, lunch as the locals do I guess!
Learn more about the Flavours of Ireland
Belfast Taste & Music Fest 2010 takes place in Botanic Gardens, Belfast, from 4 – 8 August
Auld Lammas Fair takes place in Ballycastle on 30 August 2010
Hillsborough Oyster Festival takes place in Belfast from 2 – 5 September 2010
Dear Lisa,
I sincerely hope that i haven’t offended you with my comments Re hmm food… and music!! I love Ireland and have been spending part of my time there, mainly South Ireland; Dublin, Cork and the surrounding neighbourhood. I love horse riding by the beaches and love the culture, the people and just the way things are compared to England.
Thank you for your kind support and allowing others to know more about Ireland.
Very best wishes,
Rakhee
Love the blog and love the comments about the food. If only I could be there. The biggest mistake I made in my second visit to Ireland was NOT going to Northern Ireland. Definitely plan on doing so next time. Thanks so much for sharing … could almost taste the food.
These are wonderful recipes! I will certainly print them and use them for friends’ visits.
Hey Rakhee! Offended, never – I loved the comment…music and food is the best combo I can think of! Really glad you like the blog…it’s been a while in the planning and making, and thinking of the topics was fun in itself! Seriously trying to keep it as varied as possible, so people across the world can find out more about every little thing going on here! Keep watching – and posting…it’s much appreciated.
Hey guys – really glad you like the posts…lots of people have been really good and helped us pull together all the information, so we can share it with you! Let us know if there are any topics you’d like to see, too!
[...] food? Well, you have to tuck into some of the local specialties window.fbAsyncInit = function() { FB.init({appId: "115791158482515", status: true, cookie: true, [...]
I love the rhubarb crumble with cream that I had in Belfest. Delicious!
[...] Northern Ireland is another tasty destination for foodies Food & Drink Aileen Power [...]